Heaven, of the judge, and of the people.
This sanguinary law was introduced into Gaul by the Burgundians; and
their legislator Gundobald condescended to answer the complaints and
objections of his subject Avitus. "Is it not true," said the king of
Burgundy to the bishop, "that the event of national wars, and private
combats, is directed by the judgment of God; and that his providence
awards the victory to the juster cause?" By such prevailing arguments,
the absurd and cruel practice of judicial duels, which had been peculiar
to some tribes of Germany, was propagated and established in all the
monarchies of Europe, from Sicily to the Baltic. At the end of ten
centuries, the reign of legal violence was not totally extinguished; and
the ineffectual censures of saints, of popes, and of synods, may seem to
prove, that the influence of superstition is weakened by its unnatural
alliance with reason and humanity. The tribunals were stained with the
blood, perhaps, of innocent and respectable citizens; the law, which now
favors the rich, then yielded to the strong; and the old, the feeble,
and the infirm, were condemned, either to renounce their fairest claims
and possessions, to sustain the dangers of an unequal conflict, or
to trust the doubtful aid of a mercenary champion. This oppressive
jurisprudence was imposed on the provincials of Gaul, who complained
of any injuries in their persons and property. Whatever might be the
strength, or courage, of individuals, the victorious Barbarians excelled
in the love and exercise of arms; and the vanquished Roman was unjustly
summoned to repeat, in his own person, the bloody contest which had been
already decided against his country.

A devouring host of one hundred and twenty thousand Germans had formerly
passed the Rhine under the command of Ariovistus. One third part of
the fertile lands of the Sequani was appropriated to their use; and the
conqueror soon repeated his oppressive demand of another third, for the
accommodation of a new colony of twenty-four thousand Barbarians, whom
he had invited to share the rich harvest of Gaul. At the distance of
five hundred years, the Visigoths and Burgundians, who revenged the
defeat of Ariovistus, usurped the same unequal proportion of _two
thirds_ of the subject lands. But this distribution, instead of
spreading over the province, may be reasonably confined to the peculiar
districts where the victorious people had been planted by their own
ch